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The Nature of Institutions

Floyd Henry Allport

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL AND SOCIOLOGICAL DEFINITIONS OF INSTITUTION

THE term institution has long been one of the descriptive categories of
sociology and political science. Upon looking over treatises dealing with this
concept, however, one is impressed by its lack of fruitfulness. The content
which it implies has been of little use in helping us to understand actual human
situations. Accepted out of traditional usage, the term "institution'' has not
been subjected to that scrutiny which is usually applied to working scientific
concepts.

There seem to be at least two possible ways of defining institutions, ways
which belong to diverse currents of social theory. The first view treats the
data of social science as upon a plane separate from the data of natural
science, and as comprising entities which are "super-individual" and uniquely
"social." From this standpoint institutions are entities having a kind of
structure. They are also spoken of as forms of control which society places upon
human life, or as the rational working out of social purposes. In whatever
manner such statements may differ in detail, they have the common import of
treating institutions as things in themselves. Human behavior is of course
implied in them; but they have a reality of their own upon a societal plane,
which is to be studied by an approach not to individual behavior, but to the
institution per se.

The other definition classifies institutions as phases or segments of human
behavior. Since the institution, on this view, is wholly behavior, it is to be
discovered only by a study of the habits and attitudes of individuals. We must,
of course, have a sufficient sample of individuals; but we are nevertheless
studying concrete individual behavior, and the supporting discipline therefore
is not sociology but psychology. The principles to be employed in this approach
are not those of a sociological level, such as social continuity, tradition,
social organization, and social control; but psychological concepts such as
attitude, habit formation, educational processes, and common segments of
response. The units involved in such a formulation of institutions are in the
same sphere of reality as the units of biology, chemistry, and other natural
sciences. Like the latter, and unlike the sociological units, they tend to be
directly and concretely, rather than metaphorically, experienced. This approach,
practically ignored by social scientists in the past, has peculiar advantages
not only

(188) for the understanding of institutional processes, but for developing a
technique of measurement and discovering generalizations whereby changes may be
predicted.

The sociological and psychological viewpoints are, to be sure, often combined
by social writers within a single definition. A recent textbook, after
discussing various definitions, finally arrives at the conclusion that "an
institution is made up of three factors: namely, (1) a system of approved
group-ways carried over from the past, (2) people interested in observing and
perpetuating this system of ways and organized for the purpose of doing so, (3)
a group of things used by the people for the observance and perpetuation of the
ways."[2]
This statement clearly combines
the two views of institutions described above. The psychological phase is shown
in the mention of certain definite types of human behavior (group-ways) as well
as of individual human beings. The sociological aspect is comprised in speaking
of "a system of group ways" perpetuated by the people; this
system, by inference and by contradistinction from the people themselves, being
treated as a reality apart from individuals. The group behavior is somehow
abstracted from its concrete existence in individuals and given substantive
character as "the institution." A still clearer example of the practice of
changing psychological units into sociological entities endowed with a potency
of their own is shown in the following definition quoted by the same authors
from Hobhouse: "Institutions are recognized and established usages governing
certain relations of man." A further formulation from the sociological
standpoint treats institutions as "accumulations of social capital which have
been produced in the course of community life."[3]

The chief difficulty in all those formulas is that of securing a satisfactory
substantive meaning for the term institution. The group of collaborators quoted
above tell merely what the institution comprises; they neglect to state what it
is. Hobhouse calls institutions ''usages which govern human relations." But
this statement is unsatisfactory because untrue except in a metaphorical sense.
To say that usages (habits) govern men is merely to say that men usually behave
in an habitual manner. The author last quoted resorts to a purely figurative
notion (''accumulated social capital") in order to give content to the term
under discussion.[4]

The conclusion which seems to force itself upon the writer is that, from the
viewpoint of natural science, the institution is not a substantive concept at
all. That which the sociologist calls an "Institution" is from the
psychologist's standpoint merely similar and reciprocal habits of individual
behavior, together with tools which individuals have constructed for carrying
them out. These habits are plural and discrete (existing in individuals
separately) and therefore devoid of the synthesis or unity implied by a single
term such as "institution." It is impossible to abstract from individuals these
ways of behaving and point to "the common way" of behaving as an entity in any
scientific sense. The word institution describes a situation of similar and
reciprocal behavior. It is not a thing in itself. From a psychological
standpoint we may speak of institutionalized behavior, but not of an
institution.

(169)

It is not impossible, the writer believes, to resolve this paradox of
mutually antagonistic formulations and to combine the two views into a useful
approach. For the present, however, it will be of greater help toward clarity of
thinking if we hold them sharply in opposition. For purposes of studying the
contrast we can find no better material than that contained in Professor Judd's
recent work, The Psychology of Social Institutions. This book, though
written mainly from the standpoint of a psychologist, combines the psychological
approach with the traditional view concerning social entities. Certain
contradictions and shifts of emphasis have resulted which are illuminating from
the standpoint of our study. These will now be considered in detail.

In the work mentioned above, the author treats mainly of the simpler and more
elementary portions of culture, such as language, number systems, and measures
of precision in weight, distance, and time. The more complex institutions of the
sociologist, such as the "church" and the "state'' have been given only a
cursory analysis. The main theme of the book is that we cannot understand
society, or even individual behavior, so long as we study only the isolated
individual. No mere laboratory investigation of the individual and no
description of his instinctive or emotional nature will enable us to understand
the complex institutional factors which mold and control his very thinking and
living. "We live," says the author, "in a world where the luxuries of life are
delivered to us through meters, reported in Arabic numerals, and paid for in
coin'' (p. 151). In consulting a watch a man makes use of many inventions and of
the coöperative acts of past generations performed by individuals whose lives
and characteristics are now lost forever. Hence "there is a breadth and scope in
the psychology of social institutions which is entirely lacking in any system of
individual psychology" (p. 127). "Coins," according to this author, "are symbols
of a series of social interrelationships" (p. 49). The social situation he views
as involving a network of mutual expectancies. We expect people to greet us in a
manner prescribed by their social status in relation to ours. We expect our
paper money to pass at the same value as coin or in exchange for a certain
amount of some specific commodity. We expect people to keep their appointments
according to a standard system of time which we also are following. The social
situation creates a certain type of expectancy and consequent effort to meet
this. The general treatment of the book thus dignifies institutions by treating
them as a field of objective facts and implying that they have a "psychology" of
their own which in some paradoxical manner is distinct from the psychology of
human individuals.

On the other hand, since Professor Judd is a psychologist he is bound, in the
concrete development of his thesis, to treat the individual as the locus of the
psychological processes of which institutions are composed. "This attitude of
confidence [in paper money] . . . . is the outgrowth of repeated experiences in
which we have seen the paper accepted without hesitation by trades-people" (p.
5r). He also points out that the stability of paper currency is dependent upon
the individual's attitude of confidence in the government set up by the group in
which such paper passes as legal tender. In another connection he takes the
position that the rapid increase in the diffusion of printed information is due
not so much to such inventions as the modem printing press, as to the increase
in reading ability and reading habits of the people. Coming therefore to closer
description, Professor Judd's

(170) "institutions" resolve themselves into the concrete activities of
individuals involved in the making and using of tools, in the employment of
common measures of precision and in attitudes of mutual expectancy.
"Expectation," he says, "may be described as the conscious counterpart of a
habit" (p. 60). While we have travelled a long way from instinctive and
emotional life to arrive at these patterns of tool-using and mutually expectant
attitudes, it is still true that we are dealing with patterns of human
behavior and therefore with the psychology of individuals. And thus the
author leaves us with the contradiction which results from attempting to combine
without analysis the sociological and the psychological views of institutions.
On the one hand the institution is conceived as an objective social entity; upon
the other it is viewed wholly as subjective and within individuals.

Attention may be called to certain passages of Professor Judd's book which
when placed side by side will exhibit this contradiction.[5]
At one place the author says: "Institutions are crystallized ideas. They make
possible the transmission of ideas. They are detached from the minds in which
they originated and are capable of affecting other minds" (p. 17). Let us
compare this super-individual conception of institutions with the two following
formulations: "The effects of institutions such as we have been describing did
not begin to accumulate rapidly until men arrived at a recognition of the
advantages of imitation as a method of adaptation" (p. 17). And again: "A word
cannot pick up an idea and carry it over to another mind. Ideas become effective
in a group only in so far as all the members of the group have learned forms of
thought which are common" (p. 114). At one time the author thus stresses the
rôle of the institution in understanding the individual; at another time he
stresses the psychology of the individual as the basis for understanding the
institution. He wishes to establish the conviction that "individual mental life
is what it is by virtue of powerful social influences" (p. 12.8). Yet he is
continually showing that these "social influences" are simply the modes of
behavior or the inventiveness of other individuals.

Turning now to a few special problems in which the psychological and
sociological views may be contrasted, let us examine more closely the concept of
''expectancy" which Professor Judd has made basic in his treatment of
institutions. "The fact which we have described by the term 'expectation,''' he
says, ''is at once a product of group life and a dominant fact within the
individual. Once an expectation has been created it becomes a guide to conduct.
The breach of an expectation gives just as acute distress as a physical pain. In
this sense expectation is a new form of reality capable of being described and
demanding respect on the part of all members of the group"[6]
(p. 59). Again: "Social groups produce by their interaction modifications of
individual behavior. These we call conventions. The convention is recorded in
the individual as an expectation and as a habit of personal conduct. It
should not be overlooked that expectation while it is related to behavior is not
synonymous

(171) with individual habit. The superior expects a certain type of
salutation from the inferior, but the superior does not himself cultivate as a
personal habit the mode of salutation which he expects. Habit and
expectation issue in highly elaborated systems of behavior and in complex codes
of conduct to which the group not only gives its sanction, but on which it is
prepared to insist with adequate power to enforce its demands" (pp. 6i-62.).
(Italics are by the present writer.)

This view, while sound in the main, invites a criticism of the treatment of
expectation as a category different from habit. Is there really an "expectation"
(or abstract custom), apart from habits of individuals, which determines such
situations as these? While it is true that the superior does not have the same
habit of salutation which he expects from the inferior, still, he has a habit of
his own. The social situation comprising expectancy then may in certain cases
mean the readiness of two individuals to respond to each other by respectively
different forms of behavior. It is a situation in which each expects a form
of behavior different from his own. The superior, moreover, is actually thwarted
in his own habit of salutation if the greeting of the inferior is lacking in
deference or otherwise at variance with convention (expectation); for the former
in this case must block his usual reaction and respond by anger, hauteur, or
some other method suitable to the implied offense. In other words expectation
lies in the neuro-muscular "set" for releasing wonted habit-responses without
blocking or hindrance. When we say our expectation is thwarted by unconventional
behavior of our fellows, we mean our own habits of response are thwarted. In
addition to this, other habitual reactions of the superior are blocked,
attitudes which we are accustomed to regard as his "sense of self-esteem" or
"public dignity." Expectation then may be reduced to a situation where each
person is set to perform his particular group of habits upon meeting the other.
These habits may be the same in the two persons or may differ, according to the
individual's previous encounters with the other person, or with similar
individuals who have stimulated him in the same manner.

A more obvious example of the identity between expectation and habit is seen
in our behavior in passing upon the right when we meet another individual upon a
highway. In this case the expectancy which each has of the behavior of the other
is mainly comprised in the fact that neither can perform his own usual habit
(passing upon the right) unless the other person does likewise. In this
democratic situation the responses of the two individuals are similar but, owing
to their face to face position, reciprocal. A more despotic arrangement would be
for the inferior to yield always the complete right of way to the superior. In
this case the habits of the two would be again reciprocal, but different. To
quote Professor Judd's own statement of the case: "The man of superior rank,
which at first meant the man of superior strength, [upon meeting another man]
pushed the weaker man aside. When two men of equal rank met, they sometimes
decided who should have the path by trial of strength. In either case, the
tendency was ultimately developed for the weak to defer to the strong Indeed,
all that we have described by such terms as 'prestige' and 'rank' is in the
making when men meet on a narrow path, not because the path in itself conveys
the idea of prestige but because the social situation creates a certain type of
expectation and a consequent effort to meet this expectation" (pp. 6263). It
seems to the writer, however,

(172) that if Professor Judd had gone a little further and had acknowledged
that this custom of dominance and submission lay entirely in the habits or
attitudes of the persons meeting each other, he would have reduced "expectation"
to a scientific category instead of having left it hanging in the air.

A second problem bringing into contrast the two views of institutions under
consideration is concerned with numbers and measures of precision. To Professor
Judd the number system is apparently not merely a matter of individual
psychology but a unique social invention existing objectively. It is a tool
which individuals come to use in learning to think and deal with their
experiences. It is a mold in which the individual's thought is cast, and not
merely a set of habits which he may acquire. This is shown, he says, by the fact
that children exhibit marked individual differences in their learning of the
number system. Some use one kind of mental imagery, some another kind, and some
none at all. Some are proficient in one branch and defective in other branches;
others are equally proficient in all. In contrast with these psychological
differences we may place the stable and objective character of the number system
which in itself is the same for every individual. The "social institution"
therefore is something more than the psychological processes of individuals (pp.
154-156).

In reply to this ingenious argument it may be said that its author has
limited himself too thoroughly to the introspective point of view. There are to
be sure conspicuous differences in individuals' reports of their "content of
consciousness" during the learning process and in their use of numbers. If we
consider their behavior, however, we shall find no striking differences,
but rather, striking similarities. If two boys each count out ten pennies, while
there may be individual peculiarities in the manner of handling the coins, there
will, however, be certain aspects of their movements which are practically
identical. When several persons speak the numbers, while there may be individual
differences in pitch and timbre of the voice and in inflection, there will be
striking similarity as to the basic vowel and consonantal sounds. These audible
similarities rest, of course, on similar responses of the vocal muscles in the
various speakers. When we examine therefore the "institutional" or like
behaviors of individuals we shall find quite enough identity and regularity to
convince us that the number system may appear as stable and universal while
still having its existence in the behavior mechanisms of human beings. There is
no necessity for the hypothesis of an objective numeral system in order to treat
this "institution" as a datum of science or to explain its fundamental value and
universal acceptance.

A unit of measure, such as a yard, is another example of a concept which,
though often treated as super-organic, may be reduced to the plane of natural
science. Conformity to widespread human usage and the feeling of prestige
attaching to universal acceptation incline us strongly to believe that that
which is universally used and spoken of must be fundamentally real and
independent of human experience. Everyone speaks about a yard in so matter of
fact a way that we tend naïvely to accept it as an entity existing in the
natural order of things long before men began to weigh and measure, and
discovered and adopted by men at some early period of history. Experience,
however, when carefully observed reveals no such entity as a yard. We have only
spatially extended objects. The notion of "yard" indicates psychologi-

(173) -cally the attitude we take in breaking up such a linear extension
into designated parts. The material scale used for laying off these
subdivisions, rather than the abstract notion of "yard," is the thing which
designates the length of the parts. We know we are using the right scale because
our "yardstick" can be compared at any moment with a standard stick kept at the
national capital under carefully controlled conditions of temperature, etc. The
fact that we compare our scale with this particular standard has, of
course, no significance beyond the fact that millions of other persons with whom
we may deal can be relied upon to govern their behavior by the same standard
and apply to it the common term, "yard." It would be difficult therefore to find
any substance for the notion of "yard" except of a psychological sort:
i.e., the habitual attitudes of individuals in designating, accepting, and using
a certain physical object for purposes of measurement.

Professor Judd had brought out clearly the acceptance of units of measure as
real things by the untutored mind. This notion belongs in the realm of primitive
metaphysics rather than modern science. The child is born into a world where the
units of time and space, like paper and silver money, seem to be ultimate
realities. He accepts them as phenomena quite divorced from human causation,
just as he would accept rocks or trees. Only through critical reflection can
these "institutions" be reduced from objective or societal reality to a
psychological plane. People in early times, like many moderns, seem not to have
made such a critical analysis. And this was no doubt one of the main reasons why
there were such notorious and unchallenged discrepancies in the employment of
weights and measures. The long standing lack of precise standards and universal
enforcement of their use seems remarkable in modern perspective. Professor Judd
has traced the histories of these technological improvements and has shown that
only at a relatively recent date have individuals been specially commissioned to
give deliberate study to the legal standardization of weights and measures. But
he seems to have overlooked the important rôle which the very tendency to reify
the institution, or standard of measure, may have played in this delay of
standardization.

As long as commodities are measured by a certain definite stick or weight
which is carried from place to place such confusion can not occur. But when the
unit is conceived as a thing in itself, of which anyone of a class of
unstandardized objects, such as the hand or the arm, is accepted as a
representation, then measurements are bound. to become inexact, because
attention has been diverted from the concrete to the abstract. The foot and the
ell were so permanently established as objective social realities, of which the
human foot or forearm were merely expressions, that it was a long time before
our ancestors recognized the fact so obvious to us, namely, that human
appendages differ in length, and that the important thing therefore is not the
abstract "foot" but the concrete "foot-rule." In order to be approached and
studied by the method of natural science, units of precision like the other
"institutions" must therefore be defined not upon the societal level, but in
terms of the habits or attitudes of the individuals who employ them.

THE RELATION OF INSTITUTIONS TO HUMAN NATURE

In his tendency to ascribe causation to the social pattern or institution as
such we find that Professor Judd is in close agreement with cultural
determinism. However his concrete psychological analysis

(174) may contradict this theory; in his insistence upon the gap between
primitive human nature on the one hand and social institutions upon the other,
he leans strongly to the side of such writers as Ogburn and Dewey. Here again a
correction is needed from the standpoint of psychology and biology in order to
keep the notion of institution within the realm of natural science. We shall
consider the relation of institutions to original human nature and the learning
process in such elements' of culture as language, tools, and industrial
organization.

Professor Judd's account of the growth of language deals mainly with the
development of language as an entity. Symbols (pictorial and phonetic), syntax,
and semantics are thoroughly discussed. The problem of origin, however, and the
rôle of face-to-face behavior through which symbolic vocal expression must have
originated are neglected. He treats the pattern of language-forms, like other
institutions, as a kind of mold into which society compels the individual to be
fitted. The institution itself makes for the conformity not only of
communication but of the verbal tools with which thinking is largely conducted.
While there may be truth in this conception, it neglects certain fundamental
aspects. It explains neither the origin of language in the race nor the process
by which individuals acquire it. The psychological definition of institutions
would require that we consider language to exist essentially in the vocal and
writing habits of individuals. And if language is a part of individual behavior,
we must expect to find it integrated and having significance with relation to
the prepotent (instinctive) needs and the emotional life of the individual. It
could not have come into existence without in some way rendering service to
these needs. Nor would it be learned by succeeding generations and maintained in
social interaction without its having such a value. A scrutiny of face-to-face
groups in which language is being developed, if such were available, would yield
important knowledge upon this problem. We should probably find that the
necessity of getting reactions from others and adapting our biological needs to
the environment through eliciting appropriate behavior from others (social
control) were the necessary conditions for the invention and transmission of
linguistic behavior.

In the consideration of tools as a part of institutional structure we can
attack the cultural argument in its clearest form. Professor Judd maintains that
when tools were developed their manufacture and use became institutions far
removed from the primitive instinctive and emotional life of mankind. Through
tools we pass from mere biological existence into an age dominated by material
inventions. The enormous technological specialization and development of modern
life seem to be a forceful confirmation of this hypothesis. The fact, however,
remains that tools were and are developed in the service of prepotent
(instinctive) needs, and would probably not now be used if individuals did not
have these needs. Tool culture may be regarded as inventive and learning
processes worked out as efferent modifications of the original food seeking and
protective responses of the infant. These forms of behavior (tool culture) have
become so efficient and so capable of satisfying our wants before they arise
that their vital connection with the biological and psychological aspects of
human nature is often overlooked. As soon, however, as conditions are so altered
that tools and allied institutional behavior fail to minister to these needs we
find that the original instinctive and emotional behavior of man at once comes
forth to dominate the situa-

(175) -tion. Fundamental and individual human nature has in fact been active
all the time though obscured through the complexity of technical and social
organization. We err in ignoring these constant and basic factors merely because
modern organization is so stabilized that they rarely come to notice except
during a cultural upheaval or crisis.

The entire modern division of industry may be summarized under two heads:
(a) performing some one of the adaptive processes into which the entire work
of the world has been divided, and (b) getting paid for this work in some medium
of exchange and using this medium to satisfy the biological wants and emotional
cravings of the worker. Professor Judd himself has formulated this process and
indicated its highly developed nature as follows: "These collateral institutions
[division of industries] were the primitive form of exchange. The hunter had
food in excess of his personal needs. The spear-head maker had stone points but
lacked food. It seems very simple in this day, when customs of exchange and the
means for carrying on trade are fully established and understood, to suggest
that the hunter and the artisan enter into a mutually advantageous relation and
exchange their products. For primitive man, wholly unsupplied with money,
unsupplied with instruments of measurement, and, above all, unacquainted with
the idea of exchange, the situation was by no means so readily adjusted as it is
today" (p. 19). Keeping in mind this essential formula of exchange of labor the
entire history of industrial institutions might be treated not merely as the
advance of technology, but as a progressive specialization of behavior habits
whereby the instinctive tendencies of individual life can be better adapted to
the environment, and adapted not so much through direct contact with the raw
conditions of nature as through common institutional attitudes and reciprocal
adjustment of habits within the group. To say, therefore, that economic culture
becomes a super-organic entity divorced from the psychology of the individual
and controlling him as if from above is so one sided as to be thoroughly
misleading.

The same criticism applies to the artificial separation which the cultural
determinist makes between cultural institutions and human nature in the matter
of maladjustment. Professor Ogburn has dealt with the general aspects of this
problem in his work upon Social Change. It has remained, however, for
Professor Judd to give a vivid account of the conflict between "individual
psychology" and the nature of the industrial institution.[7]
In our age of rapid machine industry and specialization of process the prospect
of unemployment produces a constant and harassing anxiety. Old age, failing
health, or swings of the business cycle may dislocate the worker suddenly from
the industrial organization within which, in modern society, he finds his sole
means of earning a living for himself and his family. Fear of such a calamity
cannot be released in the normal primitive method, nor can he vent his anger
against the thwarting conditions, because there are no tangible stimuli from
which he can flee or upon which he can center his attack. The industrial machine
is wholly abstract and impersonal. There is no personal enemy or physical
obstacle, but only a set of conditions which he can neither understand nor
control. The internal secretions and other reinforced emotional energies have
therefore no outlet in behavior and can be of no service in solving his problem.
Their effect is merely further to reduce his poise and capacity for industrial
work, a result which in turn

(176) augments his fear. A vicious circle is thus established with whose
effects the industrial psychiatrist is only too familiar. It is this sort of
situation which Professor Judd has chosen to illustrate his thesis that
individual nature and institutions are two separate, and often mutually opposed,
realities.

A more helpful approach to this situation, however, seems to the present
writer to lie not in a separation of these two factors, but in the recognition
that they are both parts, though imperfectly adjusted, of the human organism. It
is not tools alone which have produced industrial maladjustment, but also
division of labor and super- and sub-ordination of the many persons engaged in
the management and craft of the various industries; in other words, individual
habits of organization through which the specialized tools of industry can be
coordinated. All this as we have shown before is not really an objective social
pattern or "new environment" to which the worker must adapt himself, though it
has been so described by sociologists. It lies not so much in the environment of
men as in the habit systems of men themselves. Psychologically the institution
consists of a large number of similar and reciprocating habits of individuals.
These habits, like others, have been acquired slowly and are difficult to change
except through gradual relearning. Industrial maladjustment can therefore be
interpreted not as friction between an objective (super-individual) culture and
individual human nature, but as a certain conflict and lack of adaptation of
habits within and between individuals, and a failure of the institutionalized
reactions perfectly to satisfy the needs of organisms under the conditions in
which they live. We are dealing of course with a complex problem. The cultural
determinist is correct in saying that without the rapid advance of technological
inventions this lag in the adjustment of the human factor could not have taken
place. What he overlooks however is the fact that the institutional habits
(within individuals) which make possible the industrial organization of the
machine age, are also a necessary part of the picture. That is, industrial
maladjustment is as truly a lack of adaptation between the operation of the
institutional habits of the individual and his instinctive behavior, as it is
between the outer tool culture and his inner instinctive needs.[8]
Hence the conflict may be located upon the psychological plane quite as well as
between the psychological and the sociological levels.

Considerations of this sort suggest that the whole problem may be turned
about face. Instead of positing institutions as agencies detached from human
beings through which society controls individuals, we may regard them as
comprised in the similar and reciprocal responses of a large number of
individuals.[9]
Institu

(177) -tions do not form a new level of natural phenomena superseding
prepotent (instinctive) behavior, but grow directly out of such behavior through
learning and invention. They are in fact merely complex modifications of
original responses, and are developed in the process of adapting to a world of
natural objects mainly through and with the help of one's fellow men.

Experience seems to show that there are no gaps in nature. Between physics,
chemistry, biology and human behavior, there are neither sharp dividing lines
not differences in scientific attitude, experimental attack, or type of
generalization. It seems unlikely also that the data of sociology should be in a
world apart. It is true that the happenings observed upon the societal level are
generally neglected by the "pure" biologist or psychologist. To point out a
range and pattern of phenomena which the psychologist and biologist would not by
themselves discover, is, in the writer's opinion, the great service which the
sociologist can render. This service, on the other hand, changes to a hindrance
when the attempt is made to segregate such a field of phenomena from the
approach, method, and inductive processes prevalent throughout the other
sciences. While it is true that a study of prepotent responses alone will not
give us a full understanding of institutional structure, nevertheless such
responses set limits outside of which institutions cannot permanently develop.
One cannot make a prediction regarding societal development from instinctive
behavior alone; but neither can one make such a prediction without it. A
balanced treatment would therefore observe a basic identity, rather than a
separation, between institutions and the psychology of the individual.[10]

THE "INSTITUTION" AS A WORKING
SCIENTIFIC CONCEPT:
INSTITUTIONAL FALLACY

If we have sufficiently demonstrated the need of supplementing the
sociological view of institutions by the psychological one, the problem of the
future is the development of an approach through units conceived in
psychological terms. It is beyond our present competence to predict the nature
of such a research or to offer any valuable contribution to its technique. It
seems clear however that the first step is to break with traditional usage in
the matter of terminology. If we are to investigate institutions as human
behavior, our concepts must be more sharply defined and brought into line with
the principles underlying denotation in the natural sciences. The biologist has
given up the use of metaphor and personification as a principle of explanation.
He does not explain the behavior of frogs by reference to the fact that frogs
as a class behave in a certain manner. The attempt is made always to state
the units of explanation in simpler and more specific terms. He may of course
describe the behavior of frogs as a class or group; but he cannot
proceed deeply into the problem without a consideration of neuro-muscular and
glandular responses and synaptic nervous patterns implanted in the germ cell or
developed through learning. In the same manner the social scientist must be more
cautious in his use of the notions of social groups, classes, forces, and
structures as principles of explanation. He must denote action and agent,
movement and function, not in a metaphysical or figurative sense,

(178) but in the manner of one who is seeking to explain his phenomena
through units explicity verifiable by human observation. In dealing with action
of any sort, that is, what is commonly called "cause and effect," he must be
careful to specify concretely the agent and the recipient. Thus, to say
that "society controls the individual" is an assertion of a metaphysical
character and out of keeping with the approach we are here proposing. To
indicate exactly who or what it is that does the controlling, who is controlled,
and how the controlling is brought about in terms of a specific and concrete
event would be to make a statement quite in harmony with the method of natural
science. Vague and misleading also is the usage of treating institutions, in a
reified or personified way, as agents of social control. The "state" or the
"church" never really acted upon any object, controlled any individual, or
framed any policy. It was only popes, churchmen, or rulers who, supported by
obedient attitudes of citizens or worshippers, performed such acts. For such
attempts to invest institutions with power to move and act as entities in the
world of natural phenomena we need some distinctive name. The writer would
suggest for this purpose the term "institutional fallacy."

It should be made clear that we are not here discrediting all use of the
notion of institution. Institutions in the sociological sense are descriptive
categories which have a real value in pointing out ranges of human phenomena
which the isolated laboratory psychologist would never see. Their greatest
usefulness, however, can be secured only by recognizing their limitations.
"Institution" is a descriptive term. To use it, or any of its variants or types,
as a principle of explanation will involve the user in the fallacy of attempting
to change words into things. Explanation, as in all scientific work, must
consist of description upon a lower, (i.e., in this case, psychological)
plane. It is not necessarily a fallacy to use the notion of "groups" or
"institutions" merely as a convenient mode of speaking; but it is
fallacious to speak of them as causing something, acting upon something, or
being acted upon, thus concealing the fact that they exist (in the sense of
natural science) only in the behaviors of individual human beings.[11]

Institutional fallacies in the literature of social science will be found to
be exceedingly numerous and varied. To point them out, the writer believes, is a
service to the refinement of sociological method.[12]

(179) It is perhaps unjust to call every instance of group or institutional
reification a fallacy. Their users would doubtless maintain in most cases that
they were intended only as metaphorical. It is surprising however how the
application of institutional and group metaphors tends to lapse over into
literal acceptance, and to pass from concept to cause, from description to
explanation. Our objection is not merely that such usage is unfruitful in
itself. The word institution has a plausible but specious ring of authority.
Many persons (scholars as well as laymen) accept it with their desire for
explanation satisfied. Further, investigation is not thought necessary; hence
the social situation remains unanalyzed and the important
factors undiscovered. The institutional concept has been used to conceal a
rich field of scientific data and to stifle the advancement of research. Clearly
then our first task in fostering a psychological approach to this field is to
subject much of the terminology of social science to a thorough revision.

Notes

A discussion of Professor Judd's Psychological Analysis.

Arneson, Barnes, Coulter, and Hubbert. A Gateway to the Social
Sciences. Ginn and Company, 1926. Pp. 108-111.

Judd, C. H. The Psychology of Social Institutions, p. 3.

It is noteworthy that in Professor Judd's entire work no adequate
definition is given of what an institution
is in terms capable of scientific use.

Our purpose here is not to discredit the valuable treatment which
Professor Judd has given the problem of institutions. A more balanced and
systematic review of this work has been provided by the present writer in
The School Review, September, 192.6, pp. 547-551. The references used in
this discussion arc selected merely as a guide into some of the confused
problems of method in the social sciences.

The term "expectation" in this sense is practically interchangeable with
the sociologist's term "custom."

loc. cit., ch. 14.

Professor Ogburn in his Social Change takes the position that since
human nature is constant, it can be neglected in the elucidation of changes.
While this may be true to some extent of biological (innate) aspects of human
nature, it is not true of the acquired and changeable aspects. And the
institutional habits to which we have referred belong to the latter class.
Since they can be changed, and are in fact continually changing, their rôle in
the production and solution of cultural maladjustment must not be overlooked.
Professor Judd's suggestion of old age pensions as a remedy is a proof of the
possibility of altering or supplementing our institutional habits in such a
way as to adjust the situation. While Professor Ogburn might refer to this as
a cultural rather than a psychological development it can as truly, and, the
writer believes, quite as suggestively be dealt with as the latter.

We should of course include material objects, such as tools, buildings,
and records within the scope of the word institution. The ability to use such
implements, however, as well as the social organization growing up around
them, belongs upon the level of the behavior of individuals.

The fundamental activities of human nature determine not only the
extent of institutional specialization; they determine also its
directions. The fact of a universal culture pattern, described by
Professor Wissler shows how intimately the psychology of the human individual
is interwoven into the texture which is studied by the ethnologist.

For further discussions by the present writer dealing with various aspects
of the "group" and "institutional" fallacies consult the following:
"The Group Fallacy in Relation to Social Science," Journal of Abnormal
and Social Psychology, Vol. XIX, No. i, April June, 1924. (Also reprinted
by the Sociological Press, Hanover, N. H.) "The Group Fallacy in Relation to
Culture," Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, Vol. XIX,
July-September, 1924.
"Social Change: An Analysis of Professor Ogburn's Culture Theory,"
Journal of Social Forces, 1924, Vol. II, 671-676.
"The Psychological Nature of Political Structure," American Political
Science Review, August, 1927.
"The Psychology of Nationalism," Harper's, August, 1927.

The following examples of institutional fallacy are taken for convenience
from Judd's Psychology of Social Institutions, with italics by the
present writer. They are by no means characteristic of the entire book; and
the reader should be cautioned against the unfair impression which their
selection might convey. The institutional fallacy, moreover, far from being
limited to Professor Judd, may be found in the writings of many
sociologists and political scientists.
"Government, for example, is a device which social intelligence
bas evolved to direct and check human behavior so that there shall be
harmony within the group" (p. 4). "Every social institution becomes in
this way not merely the embodiment of an idea or tendency which brought
it into being, but a force influencing the consciousness and behavior
of all who come into contact with it'' (p. 65). ''The institution is not the
group but it is the product of cumulative group action and the source
of group influence" (p. 75)."Money dominates individual behavior and in so far as it does, we are
justified in saying that the group,
through its institutions, exercises control over the individual" (p.
75). "The fact is that the will of the group
has become so influential in guiding individual behavior that even when
social judgment expresses itself,
not in statutes, but in that much vaguer form known as public opinion, it
operates powerfully to limit and direct the activities of citizens" (p.
322). "Men start with a few words and phrases and as soon as they master these
they deposit the results of their common thinking and common behavior in
institutions such as religious belief or customs of courtesy" (p. 214)

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